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I told you or will tell you - depending on the order in which these bits get assembled - how in junior high the school I was in broke out the top twenty
intelligence-wise and put them in one class. We pretty much were all the same for the next six years - one dropping out or one coming in - but there was
a core of probably fifteen or so for most of the six years. Sometimes it was because one moved away and sometimes it was because one couldn't maintain the grades.
One kid that was from a prominent family as they used to say - very prominent as in being a kid of one of the two brothers that owned one of the banks and
a lot more of the town. He couldn't cut it and the family sent him to a private school. Nice kid too, I knew his brother and he was pretty decent. The
cousins (kids of the other brother) weren't so nice and one of them was in my class too, them being the same age.
I always thought Temmy was a strange name but somewhere along the way from the third grade or so I learned her name was September Lynn. There was already
a Lynn in the H class but Temmy was called Temmy long before we got to junior high so I didn't figure it was so she didn't get mixed up with with the other
one. It seems we had two Steves, one being my friend that sold drugs and the other being the not all that smart son of an optometrist. Not all that smart
compared to some of us but enough to stay in the class. Some years after we graduated I ran into him selling computer supplies which paid pretty good but
most salesmen were near dumb as whatever they were selling. So I guessed Temmy as her nickname all along.
It was in the fourth grade that we first took the tests. For two days we didn't do regular classes and they brought in tests we would do all day. You had the pages with the questions and a row of circles you used a #2 pencil to fill in the circle for the answer. I didn't think much of it then, when the results came back they told me I was in the 90th percentile. I knew that it seemed I knew all the answers, or at least I rarely had any hesitation about which circle to color. Anyhow Temmy was a seriously pretty girl and was in the H section then the shred was made for junior high. I just threw that word in there, shred was a designator for an AFSC in the Air Force, if you were a 702 like I was there were three types - A, B, and C depending on which special 702 work you were doing. In the fourth grade I didn't know anything about the Air Force or shreds but when we got to junior high they kind of shredded us into different classes by our intelligence or whatever the tests with the circles told them. So seriously pretty girl Temmy got into the H section. For a while. I believe it was in the seventh grade she fell out. Not Temmy was a sweet kid, tell you the truth we all liked her. Quiet, beyond that I don't remember much. But she had trouble keeping up. She wasn't dumb by any means, just by comparison to the rest of the class she wasn't quite there. She would have no trouble at all in the M section. A friend I acquired later on, acquired as in we met and got on well and hung out outside of work and still talk to this day even, told me he sandbagged in school so they wouldn't put him in the H section. He's one of probably two that told me that and I believe him. He has the right level of cynicism and some other quality I don't readily have a name for. The other one is probably still in prison but he wasn't really as smart as he said he was and I doubt if he did have to fake not being top-drawer. The fact that he's in prison (and has by now spent most of his life there) suggests he may have overestimated his smarts. I didn't think of doing that - my naivete took many years to expire. Pretty girl Temmy got dropped into the M section after the seventh grade. Some of the kids in the class tried to help her, even helping her cheat on tests to keep her from failing, didn't help. Like I said, she was a nice kid and people liked her. She may have been happier then, I hope so. Later on, after we graduated, I learned more about her situation. Her father had a farming operation and owned an Case equipment dealership. Even with John Deere being the eight hundred pound gorilla (Dad was almost exclusively Deere) Case and IH (International Harvester) and even Minneapolis-Moline and Allis Chalmers could be profitable franchises. The brothers that owned the bank were IH dealers right up until the big consolidation that saw IH and Case and most of the others absorbed into one big whatever it is now. Her pa had the local Case dealership and it was a pretty sweet deal but he drank and gambled. And had some women on the side. Eventually it came to the end that sort of thing usually does and he lost it all. The Case dealership remained for many years, moved into a big new facility. I bought a car from a woman who worked there, the 72 Pinto. Did I mention I wouldn't mind having that car back? Just the way it was then of course. I lost track of Temmy after we graduated. The Steve who became a computer supplies salesman was at a party at the other Steve's house one night and said he had run into her and had sex with her, something we all wanted to do. But that was about the last I heard of her.
Nancy was the cousin of the rich boy that couldn't cut it in the H section. I said he was a nice kid - she wasn't. She wasn't as mean as some of the upper-class girls were to me but maybe she was just keeping her hands clean. No visible blood that is. She and I were the honor students - did I mention that already? She studied like crazy, didn't do any extracurricular activities, just studied. Whatever it was there was that little clique that would give me grief in what they thought were subtle ways. If I understood people as well then as I do now I could have figured out a way to deal with it but when you're a kid you think like a kid. I just kept my head down as much as I could and got through it somehow. Her older brother was Wells, the guy that worked at Daddy's bank. That may have been a reason he didn't like me, uppity working-class type competing with his little sister. The fact that I wasn't actually competing would have made it worse. Anyway she went to one if the Ivy League schools and went to work for some big bank. I didn't hear anything about her after that. Why I bothered to write about her I have no idea, maybe because of her brother. Or because later in life I saw a lot of people who operated that way. Learn the rules, how to use the rules for your benefit and to the detriment of others when convenient and to reward others when they help you. And violate the rules only when the reward is sufficient and you're fairly certain you can get away with it. The ultimate goal is to be able to ignore the rules whenever you desire while forcing others to comply. That requires a lot of mental energy and discipline and she had both. She wasn't super-smart but was pretty smart but had the discipline born of desire. There were several other kids in the class - besides Dan and me and about one other - that were probably more intelligent but had other priorities. But her type, by playing the game better, will ascend further faster in business and make more money. Politics works the same way which is why the country is run by people who are not only idiots but are unencumbered by conscience. Such people never contribute anything to society and are for the most part incapable of creation or invention. You could call them parasites but maybe they are symbiotes - the creative people recognize their managers as being rather useless but it allows them to work and let someone else deal with the politics. Not that we don't occasionally torpedo the career of a manager who becomes extremely odious - not for pleasure to get rid of them. If done right they don't even know what happened.
He was a working-class type like me, good kid. He didn't work at the Kroger store when I did - he worked in a little store like what are now called convenience stores - but later went to work for a Kroger in another city and became a manager. First time I heard from him after twenty years or so was because a friend who was a career Krogerite worked a store he managed. I seem to remember he played football a year or two, he was a pretty good-sized kid. Not huge or anything but stout and on the tall side. Like I said a nice fellow, sadly about the time he retired his wife was killed at a railroad crossing. No one could figure it out - the crossing had good visibility - and no witnesses but the train driver.
Trent was one of the doctor's kids. We had about, lessee, a half dozen or so if you count dentists and optometrists. There was a chiropracter in town then, a blind chiropracter, but if he had any kids they weren't in my class. So there was one dentist's kid, one optometrist's kid, two regular doctors's kids. That's four. I don't remember any others right off. Anyway I expect Trent was as smart as me and Dan, IQ-wise, without the mental disorders we had. Normal as could be, quiet, didn't do any of the mean stuff. His father was our family doctor. The other doctor's kid was a girl and her father was part of the same clinic as Trent's father. Trent was smart and was pretty much a straight A student or close - he didn't have the perfect GPA that I and the chick that was the other honor student had. Nice kid too, only time I was around him outside of school was at an occasional party we were both at. He didn't drink alcohol but did smoke pot but wasn't a pothead, just did it occasionally. He went to med school and became a doctor like his father and now his son is a doctor. He had a brother and sister older than me - the sister was just not attractive, poor girl. Not ugly but not that good looking. His little sister was a couple of years younger than me and kind of cute.
Lynn was the other doctor's kid. She was decent-looking I suppose, great body, was a cheerleader. Smarts I would guess average for the H section, which is supposed to be well above average generally. She was one of the kind of mean ones. After school she went to work at the clinic as a technician. I had an X-ray there once about ten or so years after we graduated, she was the X-ray tech whatever that involves education wise. In small outfits it was pretty common for wives and kids to work in the practice. She married a nice fellow that worked for a utility company and they had a nice house out near where I had a little hobby farm and later built a house. About the time we were both nearly 65 I went into the hospital on a lengthy adventure that began with a heart surgery that was supposed to prevent a heart attack but it didn't quite work that way. She died. I had my sixty-fifth birthday and the next few months on a series of hospitals but that's another story for another time. After I got out of the final hospital I moved back to my little farm near Twin Falls and retired. My family got me caught up on the local events of the past few years. Seems Lynn had a daughter who had died six or seven years before her, having had what they call substance abuse issues. Maybe saying she was mean was speaking ill of the dead and she was just a kid then and kids can be mean. Lynn's husband's sister married a well-off (as far as I knew) farmer - one of a big farm family - and they lived near next door, as near as could be on five acre estates. She (Lynn's husband's) sister was a real sweet kid, knew them when we were in school. They had a boy that was involved with Lynn's daughter - being neighbors about the same age and related - they hung together a lot and did drugs together. Lynn's kid is dead but the boy is still alive and recently went to prison on account of the drugs and some other stuff.
Mike was Wesley Garner's kid, one of two or three. I believe it was two and the other was a girl, kind of cute as I recall. His old man not being as rich as he let on he still had the cash to live fairly well. A lot of rich people had relatively modest houses over on Forrest street and they lived in one of them. Mike probably would have been a pretty decent kid if not for is old man and eventually did pretty well. Not that smart - M section but a lot of those guys did pretty well without being intellectual - but he usually figured things out after a while. He could be a little pompous at times and the other kids made fun of him a bit but he wasn't excluded, just not part of the inner circles. Good looking kid too, unlik his the old man. Mom was decent, both of the wives of the wife-swappers (Mike's old man and his mobile home dealer partner) were pretty good-looking. Why they married the short fat drunks they did... money. They could get it but some couldn't keep it. Junior year some of the really rich kids got their cars, I believe Mike got his then too. The fat rich farmer's kid got a fancy new 1972 Gran Torino - 351 Cleveland and fancy paint and interior. Put in a fancy Pioneer stereo (you pretty much had to go aftermarket in those days for decent sound) and Cragar SS wheels. Probably wasn't a couple thousand difference between top-of-the-line and basic back then. Probably north of four thousand for high-end, less than a thousand less for something cheaper. Anyway maybe Wesley was tight when it came to spending on the kids. Mike got a basic model, monochrome with no trim, not even a fake chrome strip along the doors. 351 Windsdor and no dual exhausts. Not having duals was downright embarassing back then. He did put Cragar SS wheels on it and tell you the truth it looked real good. Midnight blue or something like that, with the Cragars it looked real good but the cool (rich) kids made fun of him. Mike was cool, never got upset. He was like me in some ways - a lot of faux pas from not having the cultured upbringing but as I said it just kind of rolled off and he didn't get upset. His old man didn't get disgraced for quite a while after we graduated, probably ten to twelve years, and Mike started selling insurance. He was a pretty good talker and not shy and did pretty well. Eventually he had his own business and last I heard he was doing well.
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